I can't speak on behalf of Curse or Blizzard (with regards to the state of the game). But this is what I mean. This is a very general response. "AJ is shit, whose fault is it?" What exactly are your issues? Why is it shit? Because people are incessantly "bitching?" That is something I'm trying to address, cleaning up all the "bitching, bashing, useless posts" that people seem to take issue with.

I've only quoted this part, but this is going to be more of a generalized response.

So first of all, I believe that content is lacking because there are other sites out there that offer you cash for basic (and not so basic) guides. Rest assured, those sites still only cater for beginners / mediocre players so the best players could still use AJ for such discussions, but regardless, I wouldn't expect guides unless a kind of reward was offered in return (or something, I'm not suggesting that you turn AJ into something it's not, but you get the point).

Secondly, the fact that Curse has taken over AJ has led overall moderation into an entirely new direction. I fully support moderation that is just and reasonable, but AJ was in fact known for it's end of the season drama - it attracted a crapload of attention and if you've been here for more than a year you should be aware of that. Now, if you recall the end of s11, ranging from the Hydra hack thread to the Xandyn threads you should know that entire topics have been deleted / locked in there for good and that is after all the individual moderation that happened on those threads. A board like this thrives on drama and (healthy) competition, so to delete these type of threads is just... not beneficial. You also might recall how every time something like this happened another 15 topics sprung to life citing overmoderation and whatnot. And don't take me wrong, I don't support those threads for most parts, but they did have a point here and there.

I know that these are kinda just random points, but they also form an essential part of AJ that may or may not be there anymore.

Out of all those people, I believe only one still plays WoW: Vanguards. Vanguards however isn't very active on the forums. Look at the post history - 2-3 posts per month. (Vanguards does do the news work, however, I'm not trying to discredit him in any way.)

Yeah, I was talking to Breadstick (I'd assume people know he's a moderator at this point) and he pointed out something I'm seeing and maybe you're seeing as well. A lot of the changes people want, are things moderators cannot do. Access resets, gladiator helmet issues, giving people access to certain sections of the forums (structure/permissions, etc.). So perhaps the administrator team should grow OR more privileges should be given to the moderators.

And yeah, I don't think many moderators are currently playing WoW. I believe you're right on that.

Thaya, on 28 March 2013 - 02:52 AM, said:

I think this alone explains almost everything. Mod presence is needed, this is essentially what everybody is whining about. A visible mod presence, not just the report button. Especially if my suggestions are ever put in place, it'll be VERY needed on the class forums - those sections will essentially become the educational part of the forum, the useful part, and they will need to be clean. Not dry - I'm not saying ban humor - but no insults, bashing, misinformation, one-word/one-picture posts.

I don't think stricter moderation is necessary in General Discussions. This forum would be a lot more boring without the local humor. Stay junkies, please.

I'm hoping a more visible mod presence is noticed at this point / after this thread. Both proactively and retroactively. I've gotten some replies about people saying they want the humor bits to stick around AJ, so don't go overboard with strict moderation but like you said obviously no insults/bashing/misinformation, etc.

Thaya, on 28 March 2013 - 02:52 AM, said:

But again, this entire subject is aimed at the administration. Only admins can recruit new mods. This is basically the same as my thread, except that I think we're rushing forward. Take it slow, one step at a time.

Yeah. No news though. Just a discussion.

I feel you on it's similarity. I thought it was a little different since I'm trying to look specifically at moderation so that's why I made this. Again, I can try to make sure issues are rounded up here in regards to administration and something is done about that.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

What I can maybe do, is over the course of this thread, try to collect all the issues that only admins can address and itemize them, then present them to the administrators in hopes they will be fixed

I think this would be a good course of action, I'm sure you/mods probably have better methods of contacting the admins than some randy j like me does. I only brought those two issues up as a concern of quality control, wasn't trying to make a vain complaint about having the wrong helmet or something personally. It seems like a lot of current issues require administrative action - perhaps some of the willing long-time mods could be promoted to share the administrative work and we could get some fresh ones as described in Thaya's post. I don't mean to detract from the work of our volunteer mods that don't play anymore, it's appreciated.

In BC, the battlegroup forums were very active and really relaxed on moderation (vindi-2v2 threads were probably my favorites outside of rr). The community is way smaller now and the battlegroup forums are largely dead, I think people just use general discussion as a replacement.

edit: looks like you acknowledged the admin thing already while I was typing this so it's a bit redundant

This forum was created at the height of pvp activity in WoW. There were a lot more people interested in legitimate pvp discussion, so generally the forums were not only active, but informative. It's been what, 5-6 years since then? The pvp community has dropped in number so drastically, obviously there will be a lot less activity on these forums. Top players have less of an incentive to post guides and instructional videos here with the introduction of sites like skillcapped where they can get a bit of money for their work.

The ability to interact with top players via twitch is also another reason why there is less of an incentive for newer players to visit AJ. There will always be trolls, and with the dwindling number of pvpers in the community the trolls tend to stand out more. This does not even include the actual good players who spend their time trolling instead of actually having some sort of reasonable discussion. So what you have left are the few remaining people who don't have a need for these "entry level" pvp guides. The moderators can't really do much other than possibly merge a few forums, but with the inactivity on all fronts it is pretty hard to see it having much of an effect. The issue here is with the pvp community (or lack-thereof).

I've only quoted this part, but this is going to be more of a generalized response.

So first of all, I believe that content is lacking because there are other sites out there that offer you cash for basic (and not so basic) guides. Rest assured, those sites still only cater for beginners / mediocre players so the best players could still use AJ for such discussions, but regardless, I wouldn't expect guides unless a kind of reward was offered in return (or something, I'm not suggesting that you turn AJ into something it's not, but you get the point).

Secondly, the fact that Curse has taken over AJ has led overall moderation into an entirely new direction. I fully support moderation that is just and reasonable, but AJ was in fact known for it's end of the season drama - it attracted a crapload of attention and if you've been here for more than a year you should be aware of that. Now, if you recall the end of s11, ranging from the Hydra hack thread to the Xandyn threads you should know that entire topics have been deleted / locked in there for good and that is after all the individual moderation that happened on those threads. A board like this thrives on drama and (healthy) competition, so to delete these type of threads is just... not beneficial. You also might recall how every time something like this happened another 15 topics sprung to life citing overmoderation and whatnot. And don't take me wrong, I don't support those threads for most parts, but they did have a point here and there.

I know that these are kinda just random points, but they also form an essential part of AJ that may or may not be there anymore.

Yeah, so far the overall response seems to be try to stay clear of over moderation and let minor (useful?) drama go through and/or humor. I think useful "entertainment" is helpful to keeping the site popular. Obviously, I'd assume no one from Curse would want AJ to devolve to how dramatic World of Ming (WoM) got.

Incentive to create new content is something that should be looked at and I think that's a good idea. Given I just made this thread a little while ago, I don't have a readily available answer/idea on how to create more incentive to generate content. I do think though, personally, that is a good idea. It just needs to be worked on.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

I think this would be a good course of action, I'm sure you/mods probably have better methods of contacting the admins than some randy j like me does. I only brought those two issues up as a concern of quality control, wasn't trying to make a vain complaint about having the wrong helmet or something personally. It seems like a lot of current issues require administrative action - perhaps some of the willing long-time mods could be promoted to share the administrative work and we could get some fresh ones as described in Thaya's post. I don't mean to detract from the work of our volunteer mods that don't play anymore, it's appreciated.

In BC, the battlegroup forums were very active and really relaxed on moderation (vindi-2v2 threads were probably my favorites outside of rr). The community is way smaller now and the battlegroup forums are largely dead, I think people just use general discussion as a replacement.

edit: looks like you acknowledged the admin thing already while I was typing this so it's a bit redundant

Even if you think it's redundant, the more people that back that issue, the more weight it will carry (in regards to the administration aspect). So I'd encourage all people to vocalize any issue they have, whether or now it's been voiced. More responses gives more power to fixing the issues people have with AJ. I think you're accurate, as I've said before, that a lot of issues are things we need administration level access to address.

maarko, on 28 March 2013 - 03:22 AM, said:

This forum was created at the height of pvp activity in WoW. There were a lot more people interested in legitimate pvp discussion, so generally the forums were not only active, but informative. It's been what, 5-6 years since then? The pvp community has dropped in number so drastically, obviously there will be a lot less activity on these forums. Top players have less of an incentive to post guides and instructional videos here with the introduction of sites like skillcapped where they can get a bit of money for their work.

The ability to interact with top players via twitch is also another reason why there is less of an incentive for newer players to visit AJ. There will always be trolls, and with the dwindling number of pvpers in the community the trolls tend to stand out more. This does not even include the actual good players who spend their time trolling instead of actually having some sort of reasonable discussion. So what you have left are the few remaining people who don't have a need for these "entry level" pvp guides. The moderators can't really do much other than possibly merge a few forums, but with the inactivity on all fronts it is pretty hard to see it having much of an effect. The issue here is with the pvp community (or lack-thereof).

Yeah, it makes sense if the PvP community is dwindling; the game has been out for a very long time. The amount of interaction Twitch and other platforms provides certainly directs attention to those websites as well, I agree.

I was writing my last post, as you were writing yours. I think for AJ to grow, more incentive does need to be given to the users to generate more content. And if there's a way to increase interaction between players of all levels, that would increase traffic/the user base as well.

---------

I suppose the 3 things I'm seeing so far are:

A lot of issues are being raised towards issues only administration level users can work on. Access to forums, adding/deleting forums, gladiator helmets, etc.

An increased moderator presence while walking a fine line between not moderating enough (letting constant insulting posts, bashing, etc go through) and over moderating.

Finding a way to encourage the user base to generate more content, whether that's through incentives or not.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

Probably won't see this, but I have been a member of this site for years and have reached "junkie status" many times. I agree with everything you stated and I understand where you are coming from. I agree it isn't the mods as much as the admins. I messaged them personally and got no response. I posted a thread about access and this community in the site feedback. Only authoritative response I got was from a mod and he agreed. The rest of the site however didn't see this because it didn't make it to active topics.

What absolutely baffles me is the need for exclusiveness when it has been stated that less than 1% of the game has broken 2k. You have forums but the only active forums require junkie status. You have a forum and you have a targeted audience but you don't let them talk.... At most this site reached 50k unique page for one day. It averages probably 10-20k at best. In a game of millions of players and this site continuously ignores 99.5% of the player base is throwing away money and makes me question the mental state of the admins. Look if they don't want to do the job then find someone else. They are throwing away a great site and tarnishing a community for no apparent reason.

I have made this comment about the status of this site for years. I will go and find the post about it when I brought this up 3 years ago. I had "junkie status" then so it wasn't me not being able to talk.

The arena community is finally getting changes and hopefully it will grow on the game side. Tell the admins or have them message me and I will explain to them that, elites don't make the community they are made by it.

I can make a report about this if it helps. Also when making a post about the community perhaps you should do it in a thread where non-junkies can comment. There are a lot of people including myself who are a part of this community and are unable to speak.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

Regarding incentives to create content: this was discussed on every single page of my thread.

There will be content as soon as there will be a demand for it. Technically, the content already exists, it just doesn't have an output (I'm literally swarmed by PMs from people saying they're willing to contribute, and there's also tons of instructional/educational youtube channels that aren't known, because there's no healthy community where these videos can be published).

This is exactly why I'm trying to push changes to the permissions and forum structure.

Edit: I did read all PMs, by the way. I didn't reply to most of them, but I appreciate all the feedback and hope you will all be able to contribute soon.

I'd like to remind everybody that there's a "non-junkie general" sort of, The Waiting Room. It's way low on the front page, but it exists. All it needs is to be a bit more visible. General can keep its limited access.

The only question to ask yourself is "when was the last time you found something informative on AJ...besides patch notes?" It's been quite some time for me. I rerolled DK and I had to go to wowhead and scroll their forums for tips. Yes, wowhead. That's where we are at now. I still enjoy coming here and seeing Braindance and Bigmoran posting funny things (among others), but fuck, this is complete shit from back in the day. Do we really need a min arena rating to see 9 of 10 posts (myself included) that you're a faggot for running KFC, shadow is the best lock spec, and hunters are broke? I do enjoy reading the stickies for season 9. The game hasn't changed from that long ago, right?

Edit: 9 of 10 posts is on the conservative side. It's more like 19 of 20.

I can't speak on behalf of Curse or Blizzard (with regards to the state of the game). But this is what I mean. This is a very general response. "AJ is shit, whose fault is it?" What exactly are your issues? Why is it shit? Because people are incessantly "bitching?" That is something I'm trying to address, cleaning up all the "bitching, bashing, useless posts" that people seem to take issue with.

My issue is the lack of trying on whoever is in charge of the site. A rudderless ship goes no where. I think that if whoever was in charge gave two fucks then the mutliseason duelists like myself would have their access revoked or everyone would have the ability to post and maybe some stuff would get cleaned up around here.

Regarding incentives to create content: this was discussed on every single page of my thread.

There will be content as soon as there will be a demand for it. Technically, the content already exists, it just doesn't have an output (I'm literally swarmed by PMs from people saying they're willing to contribute, and there's also tons of instructional/educational youtube channels that aren't known, because there's no healthy community where these videos can be published).

This is exactly why I'm trying to push changes to the permissions and forum structure.

Edit: I did read all PMs, by the way. I didn't reply to most of them, but I appreciate all the feedback and hope you will all be able to contribute soon.

Fair enough. Yeah, the permissions/forum structure is certainly something that needs to be changed. I'm hoping that either some moderators can be promoted to administrators or that moderators will be able to do more than they can now.

Feliclandelo, on 28 March 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

Honestly, remove the Junkie access. Or put something like "arena games played" requirement or w/e. Lower it to 1800.

I believe others have suggested something similar to this and it's certainly an idea worth looking at. Thank you

Moshe, on 28 March 2013 - 04:09 AM, said:

Am I the only one who thinks that many of the mods not playing WoW anymore is a slight problem?

Vanguards and Vexo both play still. Why do you think it's an issue? I think as long as the community is still here to provide content and the moderators/administrators can clean up useless posts/tend to site issues then not playing wow shouldn't be an issue. I could very well be missing something, though.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

I have a question for you, because this is my concern with more strict moderation. Do you think AJ's numbers (amount of users) and useful content are dwindling? If so, do you think stricter moderation will cause more members to disregard this site and eventually kill off AJ? Do you think if people are more aggressive in moderation, it may worsen the website in any way? Or do you think it could only really help?

Useful content is without a doubt dwindling, hence the demand you see for guides / suggestions in the forums. Stricter moderation WILL help, people come here for legitimate feedback only to see posts like this abomination of a thread:

I don't know how this mugenloss fuck is and how he isn't banned but its amazing. Retarded ass troll posts like "u mirin" don't do anything for the community and keep otherwise good threads off topic and spiraling into flame wars. EDIT: Looks like his posts got removed. GJ mods.

There are to many circlejerky threads bitching about 1 class (s12 warriors, shuriken toss rogues) that have no place if you wan't to be taken even remotely seriously as a community. Being constructive and saying, how can i deal with throw rogues? is totally different from saying THIS SHITS OP NERFNERFNERF, which is what AJ has devolved in to.

I only read AJ for the handful of quality posts I do see, like some of Donny's in the thread linked above. If half this forum wasnt a flame fest and actually provided any constructive feedback it would go miles to helping itself out.

The only question to ask yourself is "when was the last time you found something informative on AJ...besides patch notes?" It's been quite some time for me. I rerolled DK and I had to go to wowhead and scroll their forums for tips. Yes, wowhead. That's where we are at now. I still enjoy coming here and seeing Braindance and Bigmoran posting funny things (among others), but fuck, this is complete shit from back in the day. Do we really need a min arena rating to see 9 of 10 posts (myself included) that you're a faggot for running KFC, shadow is the best lock spec, and hunters are broke? I do enjoy reading the stickies for season 9. The game hasn't changed from that long ago, right?

Edit: 9 of 10 posts is on the conservative side. It's more like 19 of 20.

Fizion, on 28 March 2013 - 04:27 AM, said:

My issue is the lack of trying on whoever is in charge of the site. A rudderless ship goes no where. I think that if whoever was in charge gave two fucks then the mutliseason duelists like myself would have their access revoked or everyone would have the ability to post and maybe some stuff would get cleaned up around here.

I think it's becoming more and more obvious (to me) that these issues are administration based. That needs to change. I can work on that issue. Thaya's thread apparently is working to generate people who want to create content and regarding corresponding incentives if necessary.

bk said:

I used to beat off alot, and fail all my classes

Insight said:

I figured he's a phony but I was secretly hoping to get pounded by someone famous.

I think it's becoming more and more obvious (to me) that these issues are administration based. That needs to change. I can work on that issue. Thaya's thread apparently is working to generate people who want to create content and regarding corresponding incentives if necessary.

I appreciate your help! I'm not pointing the finger at anyone in general. It's more of a love of the site and hoping for the best going forward. The community needs a good AJ.